10 Most Old School Wrestlers Of WWE's Modern Era
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
In his ramshackle yet hugely entertaining memoirs, Bobby ‘The Brain’ Heenan tells a story of hanging out with the boys in the hallway in Bismarck, North Dakota before an AWA show: playing cards and shooting the breeze.
Right then, a group of fans came through the doors and saw everyone hanging out together - heel and babyfaces drinking coffee, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. The boys froze for a split second… and then instantly started fighting, thirty men smashing each other into walls and throwing each other over tables, delivering worked punches and bumping big for cribbage boards to the head.
When they turned around, there was no one there - they’d just ignored the fracas and got on with their day. In the Brain’s immortal words, “We thought we were keeping them from being smart. I think it was the other way around.”
That more or less sums up what it means to be ‘old school’ in this day and age. It’s a lifestyle, a mark of deepest respect for the business and the people who came before you. It might not always be the most convenient or the most fashionable mindset - and it can sometimes even appear ridiculous - but it’s highly valued all the same, revered even by those who’ve chosen not to adopt it.
For certain people, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of kayfabe have been greatly exaggerated. These are the ten most ‘old school’ WWE stars of the modern era.
10. The Wild Man
To say that Bray Wyatt was brought up in the business is understating matters. He was wrestling Greco-Roman style at the age of three, and he pretty much thought that everyone wrestled for a living, because everyone in his family did.
Pretty much everyone knows that Windham ‘Bray Wyatt’ Rotunda and his kid brother Taylor ‘Bo Dallas’ Rotunda are the sons of former WWF midcard mainstay Mike ‘I.R.S.’ Rotunda. But there’s more to the family than that: he’s named for his mother’s side of the family, the legendary Windhams, Barry and Kendall, and of course his fearsome grandfather Robert ‘Blackjack Mulligan’ Windham.
Those are names that resonate with an old school perspective, and that’s what Rotunda brings to his character… except to him, ‘Bray Wyatt’ is a real thing, as real as you or I. Very few people in this day and age live their gimmick: Rotunda inhabits Wyatt.
Or is that the other way around? After all, Wyatt’s kayfabe explanation for that pesky Husky Harris blot on his legacy is that The Eater Of Worlds chose him as a vessel - that ‘Bray Wyatt’ is a malignant spirit that’s had several homes over the years.
During an enforced break from the ring in developmental while recovering from a pectoral injury, Rotunda had some older, sh*ttier tattoos covered with ink that reflected the new him: buzzards, skulls, a cemetery, some crucifixion imagery.
That’s some ferociously old school commitment to character - but it’s typical of the man. WWE prefers their talent to perform media interviews mostly out of character these days, seamlessly blending back into kayfabe when it comes time to promote feuds, storylines and upcoming events.
That would ordinarily be problematic for a guy playing an over-the-top hellbilly character like this - but Wyatt is so skilled at blurring the lines that he manages to make it work, answering questions put to Windham Rotunda as Bray Wyatt. He even claims that much of what Wyatt says is a version of what he personally believes, ideals he himself holds.
There’s no way of knowing how much of that is just a master of kayfabe, spinning lines to his eager crowd… but that’s the genius of Bray Wyatt. The stories he’s been involved in haven’t always been the best, but Rotunda’s mastery of character is old school through and through.